Larry Rivers was a painter, poet, jazz musician, videographer and filmmaker active in New York City and the Hamptons beginning in the 1940s and through the 1990s. Born in 1923 in the Bronx, Rivers initially pursued a career as a jazz saxophonist, and then became interested in painting, ultimately establishing himself as one of the most prolific American artists of the mid-20th century. He was resistant to the techniques and theory behind Abstract Expressionism; many of his works are considered progenitors of the Pop Art movement.
Following an honorable medical discharge from the U.S. Army Air Corps in 1943, Rivers studied music theory and composition at the Juilliard School. In the summers, Rivers toured with various jazz bands. During a residency in a music hall in Old Orchard Beach, Maine in 1945, Rivers met Jane Freilicher, whose husband Jack played in Rivers's band. Freilicher introduced Rivers to painting, and his career ambitions began to shift. In 1947, having moved to Manhattan and become a regular on the downtown jazz and literary scene, Rivers enrolled in Hans Hofmann's school of painting.
Rivers's first solo exhibition of paintings occurred at the Jane Street Gallery in 1949. He spent most of the following year in Paris. In 1951 Rivers completed a B.A. in Art Education at New York University and began painting full time, under the representation of Tibor de Nagy Gallery. The first of several solo shows at the gallery occurred in 1951. John Bernard Myers, a partner at Tibor de Nagy, was an eager promoter of Rivers's early work. Other early proponents included the poets John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara, with whom Rivers would collaborate on many projects over the course of his career. In 1953 Rivers relocated to Southampton, Long Island, along with his sons Joseph and Steven and his mother in-law "Berdie" Burger.
1953 proved a turning point in Rivers's career with the completion and exhibition of his epic painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware. With its muddy color palate, figurative technique and historical subject matter, the painting was iconoclastic alongside most major contemporary artworks, which adhered stringently to the theories and representational techniques of Abstract Expressionism. The painting was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in 1955.
In the early 1950s Rivers began experimenting with other art forms, including sculpture and set design. He first worked with plaster, then wire sculpture, and his first sculpture exhibition opened in 1954. He contributed sets to numerous theater and opera productions, beginning with Frank O'Hara's "Try! Try!" in 1952, as well as later works by LeRoi Jones, Kenward Elmslie, Kenneth Koch, and an adaptation of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex directed by Lukas Foss.
In 1961 Rivers lived in Paris with his fiancée, Clarice Price. Their studio was adjacent to that of artists Niki de Saint-Phalle and Jean Tinguely. The neighbors became fast friends and collaborated on numerous works, beginning with Rivers and Tinguely's The Friendship of America and France. Rivers completed several major works while in Paris, including the French Vocabulary Lessons series and Proto-Pop works such as the Lucky Strike and French Money series, which were exhibited at the Galerie Rive Droite.
Rivers completed another monumental work, History of the Russian Revolution: From Marx to Maykovsky, a mixed media construction of several paintings and sculptures measuring over 30 feet long and 14 feet high, in 1965. It debuted at the final stop of Rivers's first touring retrospective exhibition, at the Jewish Museum in New York.
In 1966, Rivers was devastated by the sudden tragic death at age 40 of Frank O'Hara, a former lover, intimate friend and collaborator, and a major muse for Rivers.
The following year, Rivers joined film director Pierre Gaisseau to produce a television documentary in Central Africa. Filming was completed over two trips; in Benin in 1968 Rivers and Gaisseau were arrested as suspected Western mercenaries, and nearly executed. The film, Africa & I, provided Rivers with a chance to explore a lifelong fascination with Africa, and strengthened his interest in moving image work.
Beginning in 1969 Rivers's paintings underwent a stylistic shift as he began working with spray cans and airbrushing, as well as constructing 3-dimensional surfaces for canvases using layered foam board. During the same period Rivers began working with videotape. He produced several ½" open reel video works in the 1970s, many documentary in nature, often in collaboration with his son Steven, and/or video artists Michel Auder and Diana Molinari. In 1976, Larry and Steven Rivers traveled to the Soviet Union as a guest of the Union of Soviet Artists. They brought a video camera and captured footage of their travels and visits to artists' studios.
Rivers worked on several thematic series of works throughout the 1980s and 90s, including The Continuing Interest in Abstract Art, History of Matzah (The Story of the Jews), Make Believe Ballroom, Art and the Artist, and The History of Hollywood. In 1992 What Did I Do? The Unauthorized Autobiography, written with Arnold Weinstein, was published. Rivers continued to create and show work, dividing his time between his loft building on East 14th Street in New York, his house in Southampton, and his studio in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, until his death in 2002.
Sources:
"Chronology." Larry Rivers Foundation. Web. Accessed 19 May 2014. http://larryriversfoundation.org/chronology.html.
Rivers, Larry, with Arnold Weinstein. What Did I Do? The Unauthorized Autobiography. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
For comprehensive biographical information and chronology, visit the Larry Rivers Foundation at: http://www.larryriversfoundation.org.
